3;n 



F 

J. C. Walsh 



THE DANGER ZONE 



£ 



THE POSITION OF 
THE UNITED STATES 
REGARDING NAVY 
AND MERCHANT 
MARINE. AN HISTOR- 
ICALLY ACCURATE 
REPORT OF THE 
CONFERENCE AT 
WASHINGTON ON 
LIMITATION OF 
ARMAMENT. 



16 



"Nothing but the truth" 



is. 



4 






Marquis of Salisbury, Prime Minister of England (after conclu- 
sion of Boer War) : 

"There have been great colonial and maritime powers, four or 
five, but they have always fallen. . If we ever allow our 

defenses at sea to fall to such a point of inefficiency that it is as 
easy, or nearly as easy, to cross the sea as it is to cross a land 
frontier, our great Empire, stretching to the ends of the earth, sup- 
ported by maritime force in every part of it, will come cluttering 
to the ground whenever a blow at the metropolis of England is 
struck." 

Prince Bernhard Von Bulow, German Chancellor, from his book, 
"Imperial Germany," p. 20: 

"The policy of no state in the world is so firmly bound by tradi- 
tion as that of England; and it is in no small degree due to the 
unbroken continuity of her foreign policy, handed down from cen- 
tury to century, pursuing its aims on definite bines, and independent 
of the changes of party government, that England has attained 
such magnificent successes in world politics. The Alpha and Omega 
of English policy has always been the attainment and maintenance 
of English naval supremacy. To this aim all other considerations, 
friendships as well as enmities, have always been subordinated." 

Homer Lea (American) "The Day of the Saxon," p. 36: 

"The political relationship between the United States and the 
British Empire must be regarded in the same light as that of other 
races. Whatever are their strong wants, these will determine their 
friendship, no stronger nor weaker than that of other nations. 
Whenever the angles of their interests become acutely convergent, 
there will be rumors of strife; and when they meet, war will ensue." 

Homer Lea, "Valor of Ignorance," p. 191: 

"Japan's strategic position on the north Asian coast gives her 
complete control of it and of all the trade routes that diverge from 
its shores. . . . Japan is now supreme, in a military and 
naval sense, on the Asian coast north of Hong Kong. . . 
(196). Possessed of the Philippines, Japan would complete her 
chain of fortresses from Kamchatka to the Indian Ocean. With 
her castles put up on the mountain tops of these seas, races of 
man could bay in vain." 

3 



Roland G. Usher (American), "Pan- Americanism/' p. 340: 

"England will object . . . to a great American merchant 

marine. Her notion of an adequate merchant marine for herself is 

based upon the number of ships needed in time of war to carry 

the supplies on which she depends. . . . Her merchant marine 

must be placed in time of peace on a war footing and requires for 
its support in time of peace a very great volume of freight. 
The nation can afford to own it only so long as it sustains itself. 
The prosperity of her fleet and therefore its existence is 
immediately threatened by the creation of other great fleets which 
rob her own of its livelihood by taking from it a part of the world's 
carrying trade. ... A serious crisis will result for English 
shipping of a nature which the sea power can only solve by aggres- 
sive action." 

Gerard Fiennes (English), "Sea Power and Freedom," p. 246: 

"If the whole meaning of the Ocean Empire become plain, then 
a way may be found for the application of the British ideal, suit- 
ably modified, to the whole family of nations which dwell under the 
British flag. The solution is not to be looked for in a crude equality 
of conditions promiscuously applied. . . . The first step is to 
be found in the conception of an organic realm, knit together by 
sea power." 



The references to authors in the footnotes are to the following 
works : 

Homer Lea, The Day of the Saxon, and The Valor of Ignorance. 
A. G. Gardiner, The Anglo-American Future. 
Gerard Fiennes, Sea Power and Freedom. 
Roland G. Usher, Pan-Americanism. 



THE DANGER ZONE 

The Washington Conference 

An International Conference having been called by 
President Harding to consider plans for the limitation 
of naval armaments, and the delegates from the United 
States, England, Japan, France, Italy and other coun- 
tries having assembled on November 11, 1921, the chair 
was taken by Hon. Chaises Evans Hughes, Secretary 
of State for the United States. The business of the con- 
ference having been announced from the chair, the fol- 
lowing discussion took place. 

Mr. Arthur Balfour (speaking for England) 

Let us address ourselves to the pertinent facts. What 
are they? 

In the year 1900 England was in complete and rec- 
ognized control of all the seas. (i) In or about that year 
Russia evidenced a desire to assert her sea strength in 
the Pacific. This we resented. Russia's ambitions, 
fortunately for us, ran counter to Japan's as well as to 
our own. We therefore encouraged Japan, and in the 
war that ensued Russia's sea force was destroyed. 

Immediately afterward, it became evident that Ger- 
many did not see her way to pursue her commercial de- 
velopment over seas through the agency of England's 
merchant marine. Facing the same issues which it is 
evident you are studying today, the Germans built a 
large merchant marine and created a great fleet for the 
express purpose of holding in their own hands factors 
able to establish that continued contact with the markets 
of the world which had Come to be the paramount in- 

< J > Admiral Mahan, quoted by Fiennes, p. 161: "Before that war (Span- 
ish Succession) England was one of the sea powers ; after it she was the sea 
power, without any second. This power she held alone, unshared by friend 
and unchecked by foe." 



terest of Germany. This we in England could not al- 
low to go on. (2) 

Our requirement is a merchant marine based upon the 
number of ships needed in time of war to carry the sup- 
plies we require. As the amount of carrying trade is 
limited, and as the creation of other great fleets would 
rob ours of part of the business necessary to its existence 
on the scale our security requires, Germany's merchant 
fleet created for us a problem which could} only be solved 
by aggressive action. Foreseeing this, Germany built 
a navy for the protection of her marine, m 

I point out to you in passing that should you decide to 
follow the same course the problem for us will be the 
same as that presented to us by Germany. w 

Obliged to give our attention to what Germany was 
doing, we withdrew our fleets from, the Pacific and from 
the West Atlantic, and stationed them in the North 
Sea. We left the Pacific to Japan, the West Atlantic 

'.2) Von Bulow: A French friend said to me: "You will not be able to 
complete your naval programme, for before long England will confront you 
with the alternative between ceasing your construction of ships or seeing the 
English fleet put out to sea." 

Army and Navy Gazette, London, 1904: "Once before we had to snuff out 
a fleet which we believed might be used against us." 

(3) Fiennes, p. 223: We have the largest mercantile marine as well as the 
strongest war navy in the world . . . and our mercantile strength in time of 
peace has given our navy strength in time, of war. . . . Other nations have 
been relieved of the necessity of developing resources of their own overseas, 
and the time of crisis found all the important links in the chain of communi- 
cations in our hands. 

Fiennes, p. 222: Apart from the great military stations like Gibraltar, 
Aden, Simon's Bay, Colombo, Singapore and Hong Kong, and sometimes 
combined with them, we have acquired an unsurpassed chain of coaling sta- 
tions and commercial ports all over the world, so that the world's traffic, with 
the exception of that of the United States and South American ports, mainly 
passes over routes in which all the stations are British. Hence it follows that 
the things requisite for ocean travel — coal, supplies, repairing yards and so 
forth — are mostly to be found in British ports. 

< 4 > Usher, p. 157: The potential power of England is enormous. Our 
whole foreign trade is in her hands, all our approaches are at the mercy of 
her fleet. 

(P. 342) An attempt by the United States to ensure its independence of 
the sea power involves an extensive alteration in England's present position 
in the world. 



to the United States,™ and encouraged you both to build 
up to what we thought were the requirements of our 
safety in our absence. Thanks to your subsequent assist- 
ance there is no more German problem for us. Her 
navy has been destroyed and her merchant marine has 
been scattered. We have no naval competition left in 
Europe more serious than could be offered by a fleet of 
fishing smacks.™ There is likewise no merchant marine 
competition which we, need to consider as serious. 

In the time during which we have permitted you to 
act without our apparently noticing what you were 
about, you have both entered, to some extent, upon the 
same course as Germany. As from today, that policy 
must cease. 

We are prepared to resume, as against Japan, the 
supremacy of the Pacific, (7) and as against the United 
States the supremacy of the Atlantic. This applies to 
merchant marine as well as to navies. 

<5> Homer Lea, The Day of the Saxon, p. 88: The defeat of Russia has 
diverted that power's action against India; Japan has become more power- 
ful in the Pacific than the British Empire; the Japanese sphere of political 
and economic expansion is inclusive of all British interests in the Pacific; 
England was deprived of her advantageous position of being the only insular 
power in the world by the creation of another naval nation whose geograph- 
ical relationship to Asia is identical with that of England to Europe. ... A 
second insular power has been born to live as it has lived, and to loot as it 
has looted the highways of the sea. 

Usher, p. 192: The growth of the German navy robbed the English of their 
control of the Pacific. To meet the aggression of the Germans and defend 
England, they were compelled to withdraw the effective English ships from 
the Pacific as well as from the Gulf of Mexico, and concentrate them in the 
English Channel. 

< 6 > Gardiner, p. 92: The German challenge has gone, and all the sea 
power of the continent combined would be hardly more formidable against 
the British Navy than a fleet of fishing smacks. 

< 7 > Usher, p. 193: As their own naval stations and factories were not of 
naval importance to Japan, these they would expect to retain, but all except 
a few English ships should be withdrawn from the Pacific. . . . They did not 
fail to intimate that the circumstance of Japanese control would be entirely 
dependent, in case of their own victory in Europe, upon the manner in which 
it was, and was about to be, exercised. Victorious in the Atlantic, they 
would no longer be foreclosed sending to the Pacific a fleet easily large 
enough to defeat the Japanese and extend English sovereignty as far as 
they desired. 



We propose, and are able, to dominate the industrial 
and commercial development of China, in the one sphere, 
and the similar development of South America in the 
other sphere, and your future plans, both for naval and 
merchant marine development, must be made to conform 
to what we regard, as essential to our requirements. 

We cannot allow any increase in Japan's naval or 
merchant strength which might ultimately involve a 
challenge to our position in India, and Australasia, nor 
any increase in America's naval or merchant strength 
which might involve a similar challenge to our strength 
in Africa, in South America and in China. 

As to the carrying trade of Europe, having disposed 
of the rivalry of Germany, we are not willing to admit 
the development of a new rivalry on the part of Ameri- 
ca, beyond a proportion acceptable to us; nor to permit 
the extension of American naval power to a point at 
which the American merchant marine might think itself 
adequately supported in the effort to secure a larger 
share. m 

< 8 > Homer Lea, The Day of the Saxon, p. 67: Had India not been where it 
is, there would have resulted no British Empire. Only because India is Brit- 
ish are the Mediterranean and Red Seas, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt, the Suez, 
the coasts of Asia Minor under Saxon sovereignty. For the same reason 
Africa is principally British as well as Mauritius, Seychelles, Burma, the 
Straits Settlements, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Australia. India, in a 
military sense, is the British Empire, and only as long as the Saxon domin- 
ion over it continues unbroken and its frontiers remain inviolate will it be 
possible for the British Empire to endure. 

< 9 ) Sea Power and Freedom: Gerard Fiennes, p. 145: "It is a matter of 
dispute to this day upon whom the responsibility rests for the actual out- 
break (with the Dutch). This is commonly the case with "inevitable" wars; 
those, that is, which occur because there is no room for both aspirants to 
walk side by side along their chosen path. 

P. 146: The causes of the conflicts between the British and the Dutch are, 
after all, best summed up in the blunt, almost cynical speech attributed to 
Monk, "What matters this or that reason? What we want is more of the 
trade which the Dutch now have!" That depended on our success in secur- 
ing the position of waywarden of the highway of nations, the sea. 

David Urquhart, writing before Crimean War, quoted by von Bulow: 
"Our insular position leaves us only the choice between omnipotence and im- 
potence." 

8 



Having recognized these fundamentals , and you hav- 
ing conceded that our ability to enforce our wishes was 
finally established by your consent to the sinking of the 
German navy, the only possible European force whose 
continued existence you might have utilized as a make 
weight against us, it remains for the other parties to this 
conference to agree with us upon a basis of future action 
which will stereotype the present relative positions. <l0) 

I now hand you a statement of the proportions in 
which your respective merchant and naval establish- 
ments may be permitted, for the present, to exist in rela- 
tion to those of England. Once these proportions are 
agreed to, we can proceed to limit the naval expendi- 
tures and merchant shipping programmes by which the 
proportions can be maintained. 

H on. Charles Evans Hughes (speaking for the United 
States). 

The United States respectfully declines to conform, to 
the suggestion that the national processes of her devel- 
opment shall be voluntarily interrupted in deference to 
the assumed necessity of England. 

Whatever may have happened elsewhere, we cannot 
abdicate the right to control, as far as we are able, what- 
ever is essential to our territorial integrity, economic 
prosperity, and international status. (11) 

We desire the continuance of friendly relations with 
England, but these cannot endure except upon a basis 
of conceded equality of opportunity. 

I point out to you that the development of our indus- 

<i°) Usher, p. 844: Security we may attain at a relatively small cost; but 
for independence we shall have to pay the price which the victor (in the 
world war) sets upon it. 

< u > Usher, p. 333: The ethics of independence are literally those of self- 
defence ! The unassailable right of every nation to control the factors essen- 
tial to its territorial integrity, its economic prospertiy and its international 
status. 



try and commerce within the United States has been 
accompanied at all stages by the setting up of the trans- 
portation facilities needed in connection therewith; and 
that a forcible dislocation is involved, now that we have 
progressed to the state where we have a large and in- 
creasing concern in international Commerce, in any ar- 
bitrary interruption of the control of our transportation 
facilities at the seaboard . (l2) 

We cannot be asked to eliminate from our trade the 
profits of sea freight, brokerage and insurance, (13) nor 
can we substitute, for a merchant marine adequate to our 
needs, dependence upon such facilities of ocean trans- 
port as England is willing to furnish us, (H) together 
with such ships of our own as she is willing to have us 
operate. 

(12) Mahan, quoted by Fiennes, p. 157 : "A nation cannot live indefinitely 
off itself, and the easiest way in which it can communicate with other people 
and renew its own strength is upon the sea." 

(is) Usher, p. 335: Independence of the sea power . . . would provide for 
the continuance of our contact with the international market upon which 
depends our prosperity. The profits of freight, brokerage and insurance, 
which now are paid to England, would come to us. 

Fiennes, p. 248: The Civil War destroyed the American mercantile marine, 
and the great spurt of development which followed constrained the Amer- 
icans to pay the interest of their loans to a large extent in the freights 
earned by British ships. 

Gardiner, p. 24-5: Describes how Lord John Russell decided to seize 
the Alabama, submitting new evidence to Sir John Harding, Queen's ad- 
vocate. (Quotes Charles F. Adams) "He (H.) just then broke down from 
nervous tension and thereafter became hopelessly insane. His wife, 
anxious to conceal from the world her husband's condition, allowed the 
package to lie undisturbed on his desk for three days — days which entailed 
the destruction of the American merchant marine; and it was on the first 
of these days, Saturday, July 26, 1862, that Captain Bullock, the Con- 
federate agent who ordered the ship 'received information from a private 
but most reliable source that it would not be safe to leave the ship at 
Liverpool another 48 hours'." (On Monday, under pretense of making a 
trial trip, the Alabama, alias the Service, alias the 290, sailed out to sea.) 
Gardiner: "This was the severest blow struck at the cause of the North 
from any external source. The American mercantile marine was destroyed 
by a ship built in a British yard and manned by British seamen whose 
achievements were openly applauded in the British press and by British 
passengers, who hailed it with cheers as they passed it at sea." 

(i*) Usher, p. 331: We cannot expect to maintain our supremacy in the 
Western Hemisphere and continue to depend upon some European power 
for the use of its merchant marine. 

10 



We cannot subject our whole economic position to the 
perils involved m dependence upon England, *wheri 
England's capacity for service to our trade is liable to 
interruption by her diplomatic difficulties with other 
powers, or by the exigencies contingent upon her being 
at war with one of them. We have had quite recently 
too much of that. 

Neither can we contemplate having our ships com- 
mandeered and our foreign commerce interrupted in 
such a war, and so we must have naval power sufficient 
to discourage those who might be disposed, in their own 
interest, to put an end to our sea borne commerce, there- 
by exposing us to grave economic crises. (15) 

The American marine must grow according to the 
needs of the United States, the ultimate object being 
to make it large enough to care for all exports and im- 
ports at a time when other carriers are engaged in the 
war concerns of their owners. Its growth cannot be 
determined upon, and arbitrarily limited by, the as- 
sumed necessity of England to possess in peace times 
a profit earning merchant fleet sufficiently large for 
her supposed needs in war time. {m 

< 15 > Usher, p. 336: Until we are free from the English merchant fleet and 
from the control of all the approaches to the Western Hemisphere by the 
English navy, we shall not be able to act in foreign affairs contrary to the 
policies and interests of the sea power without immediately entailing upon 
ourselves an economic crisis of the first magnitude. 

< 16 > Usher, p. 429: Disarmament will surely cost us all our national ambi- 
tions, present and future. We shall be compelled to throw ourselves upon 
the mercy of England in the Atlantic and Japan in the Pacific, and depend 
upon their forbearance, generosity and keen sense of their own interests to 
allow us such rights as are indispensable . . . Our privileges will necessarily 
be measured by their interests rather than ours. . . . An adequate merchant 
marine we shall be compelled to renounce and perforce rest satisfied with 
such facilities of ocean transport as the sea power provides us, ... in addi- 
tion to such merchant fleet as it is willing to have us build. A merchant ma- 
rine, capable of carrying all our commerce and maintaining our independ- 
ence, we can never have, for its very existence will at once arouse the appre- 
hensions of the European power whose control of the sea rests fundamental- 
ly upon its own defensive needs and which will therefore scent aggression 
and danger and decline to permit us to develop such a merchant fleet. 

11 



It must also be noted that the size of the American 
navy is in some sense dictated by the state of national 
insecurity arising from England's possession or control 
of the sea routes to our eastern coast. 

Our recent establishment of freight and passenger 
services to northern Europe in American ships has been 
followed by your demand to be allowed to fortify Irish 
ports and establish military air services on land in Ire- 
land, action which we can only interpret as being taken 
with our future European relations in view. 

Moreover, on our side of the Atlantic , you maintain 
a fortified naval station at Halifax in easy reach of our 
great centres of population, while your series of out- 
posts in the West Indies, culminating in Jamaica}™ 
constitute a permanent menace to our interest in the 
Panama canal. We know that while the French con- 
structed the Suez Canal, its present possession and 
ownership m) are with you who dominate the Mediter- 
ranean from Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus and Aden. We 
know, too, that from the first you have claimed equality 
with ourselves in the western hemisphere^ that you 
proposed it at the time the Monroe Doctrine was formu- 

(17) Fiennes, p. 221: We have acquired "the gates of the world" with the 
exception of Constantinople, the eventual possession of which is at present 
(1918) in doubt. . . . Jamaica is as well placed as Cuba for controlling the 
exit of the Panama canal. 

<!8) Homer Lea: The Valor of Ignorance, p. 113: The eventual control 
of the Panama Canal is foretold by the history of the Suez, which, dimin- 
ishing the distance between Europe and the Orient to one-half, became the 
main channel of communication between the West and the East. Built by 
France, it soon passed into English possession. The control of the Suez by 
England resulted from her masterful position in the Mediterranean and the 
Red Sea — the strategic possessions of Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Egypt and 
Aden. That France built the canal determined in no way its final ownership. 
. . . What has brought about English commercial supremacy has been, not 
alone the supremacy of the English navy, but the possession of strategic 
bases. The existence of a great navy is entirely dependent on the ownership 
of strategic positions in different quarters of the globe and maintained by 
force. 

< 19 > Usher, p. 94: England wished to control the Western Hemisphere 
without fighting for it. . . . Canning suggested a joint protest of the United 
States and Great Britain directed to the Holy Alliance, against the recon- 
quest in favor of Spain of her late colonies, and also suggested that the note 

12 



lated, that you insisted upon it when an isthmian canal 
was first suggested, that you claimed equal treatment in 
that canal when actual construction was to be under- 
taken, and that you regard as final recognition of your 
equality of status the repeal by Congress of the laws 
granting favors to certain American ships in the Canal 
built by the American people. We cannot concede to 
you equality of interest in that quarter, but must re- 
gard our interest in the canal as paramount, and must 
assert our right to defend it. 

We realize that your possessions in the West Indies 
lie across our trade route to South America, and your 
proposal to fortify Ireland, to provide a check upon 
our commerce with Europe at your pleasure, warns us 
what to expect if our commerce with South America 
increases beyond your liking. 

Finally, we cannot agree to limit our strength upon 
the sea to what is agreeable to you when we have had so 
many, and some of them so recent, examples of your 
readiness to crush your rivals, i20) to make your own inter- 

should recognize the equality of interests which England and the United 
States possessed in the Western Hemisphere. Its purpose was apparently to 
secure from the United States an official recognition of England's new do- 
minion in the Gulf of Mexico and South America. 

Adams . . . pointed out, the protection of the new republics by the English 
sea power meant simply their transfer from Spain to England, and before 
Monroe's message was read, Adams' prescience was demonstrated correct by 
an agreement between France and England to prevent the reconquest of the 
republics. This settled the question of their independence. 

(20) Fiennes, p. 165: Byng, afterwards Lord Torrington, fell upon the 
Spanish fleet off Cape Passaro and completely destroyed it. The morality 
of Torrington's attack need not be discussed . . . [it was done] to serve the 
maritime purposes of Britain, one of which was to stereotype the naval 
weakness of Spain. If defence be thought necessary, it is to be found in the 
fact that . . . encounters (on the sea) continued to be of frequent occur- 
rence, while nations remained formally at peace with each other. 

P. 202: There are few incidents on which the British people look back 
with more sincere regret than the battle of Copenhagen (1801). But regret 
springs solely from the sentiments of admiration and friendship . . . and 
from no doubts as to the justice or expediency of the course taken. How- 
ever justified intrinsically the complaints of the Danes might have been (the 
countries were at peace), the greater issues at stake demanded that they be 
laid on one side, forcibly if need be." 

P. 212: Great Britain (again) seized the Danish fleet in 1807. 

13 



est the measure of the privilege you will allow to others 
to serve theirs, and even to employ force against utterly 
unprotected peoples, guiltless of offense against you, 
if you foresee a resulting benefit for your own commerce 
or an increase of your political power}™ 

We are ready to discuss with you the part we should 
take in providing a police force for the sea which will 
assure equal opportunities to all who use it, but the sav- 
ing produced by a mere scaling down of expense, con- 
ditional upon assent to your supremacy, would be too 
heavily purchased by the resulting compromise of our 
independence and by leaving our future progress sub- 
ject to your view of what England's interest is, or what 
you may at any time foresee that interest will be. 

With regard to the Pacific, the fact of your rivalry 
with Japan has all along been evident, and there was 
final proof of it in your adopting the equator as the line 
not to be passed by one or the other when dividing in 
advance the then possessions of Germany in that ocean. 
That this division, made prior to the entrance of the 
United States into the war, and rendered possible in 
practice by our participation, was made without concern 

<2D Usher, p. 438: As the price of disarmament, we shall trust ourselves 
to the sufferance and good will of other nations, not expecting them to ag- 
grandize themselves at our expense, but ready to accept the worst if they 
decide to act selfishly rather than with generosity. Is it not perhaps wise for 
us to ask whether they are at present ready to treat us in the spirit in which 
we propose to deal with them? Do they show at present a conspicuous will- 
ingness to advance each other's interests? Have they forborne to promote 
their own where they knew them to be inimical to others? Have they hesi- 
tated to employ the force at their command to further their interests against 
peoples unprotected and utterly innocent of offense? Can we wisely accept 
their interpretation of their interests as the measure of our privileges? 

Gardiner, p. 93: "It is not difficult to conceive a jingo president ready 
to sacrifice anything for a renewal of power, inflaming the whole continent 
with a naval panic, perhaps against Japan, and inaugurating a ship-building 
programme that will seem to challenge the British supremacy at sea. We 
know what would follow — the familiar cry of two keels to one,' the frenzy 
of the incendiary press in both countries, the following excitement, the 
incidents — Morocco, Agadir, Bosnia and the rest under other names — 
perilously passed, and the final inevitable catastrophe." 

14 



for the United States is shown by the resulting inclu- 
sion of Japanese possessions within our triangle— Ha- 
waii Samoa, Guam— an obvious menace to our influence 
in the Pacific. Moreover, by this action, confirmed at 
Paris, the naval forces of Japan will have been brought 
seven days nearer the United States. Still, as between 
yourselves, the patent fact is that the line of Japan's 
advance has been brought down to where it impinges 
upon the northern line of your Indiana Australasian 
Empire, this convergence of power being evidently un- 
comfortable to Australia and New Zealand, and also 
to yourselves as regards India. 

We recognize that, while you parted reluctantly with 
the sea supremacy of the Pacific, you are now in posi- 
tion to resume it from Japan, and will doubtless wish 
to do so unless you foresee that you may have occasion 
to utilize Japan's force in the effort to enfeeble our po- 
sition in the Pacific, in which case Japan's tenure might 
be permitted to continue until you could deal with her 
single handed. 

It is very clear from your history that while you hold 
sea power to be essential to an insular power, you also 
hold supremacy in all the seas to be the right of one in- 
sular power, your own, not to be divided with another 
power because it happens to be insular. 

Russia and Germany being now out of your way, and 
Japan being forced by her position to grow on the sea, 
which is what you most disapprove, it is easy to see that 
you may now turn to China to procure the overthrow of 
Japan, which would have the additional result of adding 
a paramount interest in China to the protection of your 
Indian sphere. It would simplify matters, no doubt, for 
you, to have Japan and the United States engage in a 



15 



struggle over Pacific concerns which would end in our 
mutual helplessness, and the impotence of one. 

While the future of China is one, it is only one of our 
chief concerns, and these preliminaries of destruction do 
not commend themselves as the method to be preferably 
pursued. The United States cannot abandon her right 
to extend her commerce, as suitable occasion may arise, 
in the markets of Europe, or in the markets now open- 
ing, and certain to attain great importance in this cen- 
tury, in South America, Asia and Africa; nor to take 
such measures as will protect that commerce as it grows. 



it 



EPILOGUE 

I. In the Danger Zone 

"To help avert the insanity and wickedness of building a navy 
against the United States" is one of the two reasons given by the 
late Lord Fisher for publishing his book of "Memories." Is it 
an unfair inference that the old sea warrior assumed the probability 
of the thing being done which he was so anxious to avert? Or 
that he knew it was already begun? 

What is certain is that if the United States is in any likelihood 
of being listed as next on the slate, there is great profit to be had 
in learning, as it can be learned in these books of Fisher's 
(Memories and Records), the process of making war upon Ger- 
many, the last one on the slate. The old gentleman was quite 
frank about it all. He wasn't what one would call bashful, for 
there is an engaging chuckle running all through his narration, but 
he does tell the story, and he tells it well. 

* * * 

The tale begins in 1899, when he was sent by Lord Salisbury 
to the Peace Conference at The Hague. 'T made great friends with 
General Gross von Schwartzhoff and Admiral Von Siegel, the 
military and naval German delegates, and I then (in 1899) im- 
bibed those ideas as to the North Sea being our battleground, which 
led to the great things between 1902 and 1910." (Records, p. 65.) 
We get a hint of the conversation. "Gross Von Schwartzhoff told 
me on the sands of Scheveningen, 'Your navy can strike in thirteen 
hours; our army can't under thirteen days'." (Memories, p. 113.) 
Three years later, in 1902, England having made her first treaty of 
Alliance with Japan, Fisher began to put into effect the one idea 
he had got hold of at the Peace Conference, preparation for war 
against one of the powers represented there. He went to the 
Admiralty in that year as second Sea Lord, and became first Sea 
Lord in 1904. His purpose, for which he constantly prepared, 
was to wipe out the German fleet before it got to be too strong, 
and then, when a land war came, to land an army on the Baltic 
within a short march of Berlin. "It is the Russian army we want 
to enter Berlin, not the English or French," he wrote long after- 
wards (R. p. 225), and he wanted the British navy to be unchal- 
lenged, so it could take them there. Already, in 1904, he wanted to 
begin practising operations of the sort. "I yesterday sent plans to 

17 



French for embarking the whole of his first army corps, and 
we'll land him like Hoche's army in Bantry Bay." (M. p. 172). 
However, he did not formally avow his secret until 1907, when he 
confided it to King Edward VII. "I approached His Majesty, and 
quoted certain apposite sayings of Mr. Pitt about dealing with 
the probable enemy before he got too strong. It is admitted that 
it was not quite a gentlemanly sort of thing for Nelson to go and 
destroy the Danish fleet at Copenhagen without notice, but 'la 
raison du plus fort est toujours la meilleure' " (M. p. 34). "It 
seemed to me simply a sagacious act on England's part to seize the 
German fleet when it was so very easy of accomplishment in the 
manner I sketched out to His Majesty." (M. p. 35.) 

* ♦ * 

So certain was he of war with Germany that in 1905 (about the 
time Japan had disposed of Russia, and the Anglo- Japanese treaty 
had been renewed) he "brought 88 per cent of the British fleet into 
close proximity to Germany, and made its future battle ground in 
the North Sea its drill ground." (M. p. 75.) Later, in one of his 
quarrels with "old women of both sexes," he told how "they 
squirmed when I concentrated 88 per cent of the British fleet in 
the North Sea, and this concentration was only found out by acci- 
dent, and so published to the ignorant world, by Admiral Mahan in 
the Scientific American." (M. p. 51.) Mahan had noticed that 
88 per cent of England's guns were just then pointed at Germany. 

"What's all the shootin' ?" asks the tavern servant in Mr. Cohan's 
play. Why were all the guns turned on Germany? In 1906 it was 
because "a general commercial and political rivalry has caused bad 
blood." (R. p. 108.) Fisher wrote to the King in 1908 "that we 
have eventually to fight Germany is as sure as anything can be, 
solely because she can't expand commercially without it." (M. p. 
22.) "Can you manage," he wrote to Lord Esher in 1907, "to be 
at my room today to see arrangements for swallowing the whole 
German mercantile marine?" (M. p. 182.) By 1911, "I happen to 
know in a curious way that the Germans are quite assured that 
942 merchant steamers would be 'gobbled up' in the first 48 hours 
of war" (M. p. 203). One of his own doctrines was "a successful 
mercantile marine leads to a successful war navy." (R. p. 98). 

His reasoning was of childlike simplicity. To grow, Germany 
would have to go on the sea. England wouldn't let her. Therefore 
Germany must fight England. Therefore his business was to keep 
Germany off the sea. (Already in 1902, while he was in the 
Mediterranean, he wrote home "it is absolutely obligatory for us 
to have these (floating) mines instantly for war against Ger- 

18 



many.") Therefore he addressed himself "to that great task. 
. . . the preparation for a German war which Lord Fisher had 
predicted in 1905 would certainly occur in August, 1914, in a 
written memorandum." (M. p. 75.) The memorandum was ad- 
dressed to Lord Esher, who showed it to Sir Maurice Hankey in 
April, 1918. "He showed one letter of yours dated in 1904 de- 
scribing in detail the German submarine campaign of 1917." (R. 
p. 169.) When 1910 came along, Fisher, walking amongst his 
roses, informed Hankey that the war would start in August, 1914, 
and that Mr. Asquith would leave office in November, 1916. (R. p. 
206.) Already he was able to predict that Jellicoe would head the 
navy and French, Haig, Plumer and others be at the top in the 
army. It was all being engineered, the men were being picked. 
And all because Germany had to make war, since she could not 
progress commercially unless she did so; England would not let 

her. 

* * * 

The Germans knew what was in the air. In 1906 the Emperor 
saw Mr. Beit, the South African money magnate, and "said to Beit 
that I was dangerous, that he knew my ideas in regard to the 
Baltic being Germany's vulnerable spot, and he had heard of my 
idea for the 'Copenhagening' of the German fleet." (M. p. 49.) 
"England wants war: not the King — not, perhaps, the government; 
but influential people like Sir John Fisher. . . . He thinks it 
is the hour for an attack, and I am not blaming him. . . . But 
Fisher forgets that it will be for me to deal with the 100,000 men 
when he has landed them." (M. p. 47.) So late as 1909, Fisher 
was able to write, "The Germans are not building in this feverish 
haste to fight you. No! it's the daily dread they have of a second 
Copenhagen." (M. p. 188.) There were then "Two complete 
fleets in home waters, each of which is incomparably superior to 
the whole German fleet mobilized for war." (M. p. 188.) 

If all this disarranges somewhat the assumption, to which we 
have become habituated by repetition, that England had to transfer 
88 per cent of her guns to the place where they were pointed at 
Germany because German naval power was threatening England, 
and makes it look rather more as if they were put there to force 
Germany to build against England, Lord Fisher would not have 
shrunk from the implication. He tells how, in 1904, after figuring 
out what the Germans would be compelled to do in the meantime, 
and having fixed the date of the resulting war for 1914, he decided 
that, when the time came, "those d — d Germans, if old Tirpitz is 
only far-seeing enough," would make the German coast region 

19 



unsafe for surface ships. So he calculated how far off he would 
have to keep his navy to be safe from torpedo boat attacks, and 
with a pair of compasses located an unknown land locked harbor 
which turned out to be Scapa Flow. (R. p. 215.) "And the fleet 
went there forty-eight hours before the war;" (R. p. 216) was 
there in fact, and ready to pounce, in those days when "we de- 
ceived the German Ambassador in London and the German nation 
by our vacillating diplomacy/' (R. viii) the days when, in Mr. 
Bernard Shaw's analysis, they wanted to be quite sure Germany 
was actually at war before letting anyone know what they really 
meant to do when she became so. "The German destroyers could 
not get to Scapa Flow and back at full speed. Their fuel ar- 
rangements were inadequate for such a distance." (M. p. 46.) 

* # # 

This Scapa Flow discovery was in 1904. In 1906 and 1907 there 
was no sign of war except commercial rivalry. "In March, 1907. 
. . . Germany had not laid down a single Dreadnought, nor 
had she commenced building a single battleship or big cruiser for 
eighteen months . . . they were convinced their existing battle 
fleet was utterly useless. . . . England had ten Dreadnoughts 
built and building, while Germany had not begun even one Dread- 
nought. . . . We have 123 destroyers and 40 submarines. The 
Germans have 48 destroyers and 1 submarine. . . . Von Tir- 
pitz has just stated, in a secret official document, that the English 
navy is now four times stronger than the German navy" (M. pp. 
31-32). This was the moment chosen to recommend to the King 
the "Copenhagening" of which the Kaiser knew a year before, 
to avert which the Germans were "feverishly" building two years 
later. In 1908j "Secret. Tirpitz asked a mutual civilian friend 
to inquire very privately of me whether I would agree to limiting 
size of ships and guns. I wrote back by return of post 'Tell him 
I'll see him d — d first.' (Them's the very words.)" (M. p. 184.) 
Germany was forced to build big ships, and to deepen the Kiel 
canal to get them out to sea, and the minute it was done, at the 
exact time Fisher had calculated, someone conveniently killed the 
Austrian archduke and brought on the war. 

On May 5, 1908, Lord Fisher was able to report that, "the navy 
can take on all the navies of the world put together" (M. 186) — 
so he naturally insisted on six more Dreadnoughts and a policy of 2 
keels for 1. He got both, and by 1911 had "twice as many Dread- 
noughts as Germany, and a number greater by one unit than the 
whole of the rest of the world put together." (M. p. 201.) In- 
cidentally, the 2 keels to 1 policy "is of inestimable value because 

20 



it eliminates the United States navy, which never ought to be men- 
tioned — criminal folly to do so." (M. p. 199.) 

Meanwhile, by way of increasing the factor of safety, and look- 
ing to the future, there came the plan for the new Pacific fleet, 
whose "inwardness" both the Cabinet and the press failed to see. 
Sir Joseph Ward of New Zealand saw it. "It means, eventually, 
Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India running 
a complete navy. We manage the job in Europe. They manage 
the job . . . as occasion requires. 

* * * 

"As occasion requires." Writing in 1906, Lord Fisher affirmed 
that the building programme from year to year had to be arranged 
with an eye to the future. "For the moment, it would be safe to 
build against Germany only. But we cannot build for the mo- 
ment. . . . The ships we lay down this year may have their 
influence on the international situation twenty years hence, when 
Germany — or whoever our most likely antagonist may then be — 
may have the opportunity of the co-operation (if only temporary) 
of another great naval power." (R. p. 108.) "Great Britain must, 
it is agreed, maintain at all costs the command of the sea. There- 
fore we must be decisively stronger than any possible enemy." 
(R. p. 107.) 

The "possible enemies" will have a chance to discuss this at 
Washington in November. They will all be there, and Germany 
will not be of the number. 



Looking to the future, supposing the future to find others than 
the English merchant marine on the sea, it will not be fair, simply 
because the German submarines have been disposed of, to ignore 
what the old Viking had to say about this arm of the service. 
He was, as always, engagingly frank about it. In a letter sent, 
via the press, to his "Dear old Tirps," on the occasion of the latter's 
dismissal in 1916, he wrote: "I don't blame you for the sub- 
marine business. I'd have done it myself, only our idiots in 
England wouldn't believe when I told 'em." (M. p. 45.) He 
meant every word of it. The fact that there were no German 
merchant ships at sea saved him the trouble of proving it. In an 
official memorandum written three months before the war, speaking 
of "the submarine and commerce," he argued the whole question. 
"It is impossible for the submarine to deal with commerce in the 
light and provisions of accepted international law. . . . There 
is nothing else the submarine can do but sink her capture . . . 

21 



Barbarous and inhuman as it may appear, if the submarine is used at 
all against commerce, she must sink her captures . . . The 
essence of war is violence and moderation in war is imbecility." 
(R. p. 179.) 

On one occasion, when he wanted submarines and Parliament 
wouldn't vote him the money, he got them all the same. "I was 
First Sea Lord, and I acted for both the Financial Secretary 
(Runciman) and the First Lord (McKenna) in their absence. 
It wasn't justified, but I did it. So I was the tria juncta in uno; 
and I referred, as First Sea Lord, a matter to the Financial Sec- 
retary for his urgent and favourable consideration, and he favour- 
ably commended it to the First Lord (of the Admiralty), who 
invariably cordially approved. It was all over in about a minute. 
Business buzzed. Well, the Treasury could not make out how all 
those submarines were being built — where the devil the money 
was coming from. . . . As an outcome of that time I left the 
Admiralty with 61 good submarines and 13 building. The Ger- 
mans, thank God, had gone to the bottom with their first sub- 
marine, which had never come up again, and the few more they 
had were not much use." (M. p. 59.) All's fair in war. 

* * * 

It must not be thought that, for all his good opinion of himself, 
there was anything of the "Alone I did it" about Lord Fisher's 
recital of the preparations for the war into which England's then 
great commercial rival was being maneuvered. Bismarck had noted 
in his day that the relations between Russia and Germany "often 
found their centre of gravity far more in the reports of the military 
attaches than in those of the officially accredited envoys." Inci- 
dentally, he averred that "the archives of the Foreign Office in 
London are more carefully guarded than those of other places," 
and, on occasion, high officials select papers for publication "with 
great care and attention." Certainly one cannot read the chapter, 
in "Memories," Letters to Lord Esher, without discerning that 
whatever might have been the surface politics of the time, or how- 
ever convincing might be the various controversial "White Papers" 
issued after the war began, there was, from 1903 until the crisis, 
a perfect concert between the naval genius and others who were 
thinking of the same problem and bringing their best thought to 
bear upon it. The picking of French, Smith-Dorrien and Plumer, 
long in advance, for the work they ultimately did in France, was 
no accident. Haig was sent for from India in 1904, because "we 
must have youth and enthusiasm." Another general was chosen 
because he was "young and energetic and enthusiastic." It was 

22 



a time of clearing out the "old gang" and bringing in new men of 
whom "every one must be successful men." Asquith, Balfour, 
Lloyd George, McKenna, Churchill, are all seen to have been 
helpful behind the scenes, in ways that might not easily have been 
guessed from their public appearances at times. Gen. French 
and military assistants conferred, 1911, with the French, and 
the ground where the war was afterwards fought was gone over. 
Colonel Repington begins his diary with an account of how, as 
early as 1906, he and the French military attache in London 
went over to Paris to submit plans for English military co-opera- 
tion, where they found the French general staff studying plans for 
an apprehended war with England. King Edward, while he lived, 
was the keystone of the arch of preparation. 

And yet, with all this, it was still not only possible, but natural, 
for English public men, a few months before the war began, to be 
considered perfectly credible, by a peace loving public, when they 
pronounced war between England and Germany "unthinkable." 

And Prince von Bulow, in his book published just before the 
war began, congratulated Germany upon having come safely through 
the Danger Zone. 



23 



II. The Pacific 

It is to be observed that when the Pacific is mentioned in present 
day newspaper articles, the subject is almost invariably dealt with 
as though only two powers were concerned, the United States and 
Japan. The fact is, however, that there is a third power, the 
British Empire, whose naval strength in the Pacific could be, within 
two months, greater than that of either of the others, and, for all 
that anyone knows to the contrary, may be so now. 



Of the three, the one at the moment in the most difficult situation 
is Japan. The military consciousness of America seems to be busy 
just now marking Japan as a fixed point against which antagonism 
is to be directed. Also, it is evident that the central subject of 
discussion at the Imperial Conference in London this last summer 
was the future relation of the Empire to Japan, with Canada, 
Australia and New Zealand protesting strongly against the formal 
renewal of the offensive and defensive alliance which has lasted 
since 1902-1905. The five old gentlemen who are charged to do the 
thinking for Japan, and who up to now have done it marvellously 
well, the famous Elder Statesmen, now know that there is great 
and present danger of their whole work of the past forty years 

being undone, unless they are most sagaciously careful, in a single 
disastrous period of less than three months. 

The assumption of hostility between Japan and the United 
States rests upon two main bases. The first is the military 
hypothesis that Japan seeks the absolute domination of the Pacific, 
including possession of the western coast of North America. The 
second is that the United States does not intend to be shut out of 
the trade with China, or to be admitted there upon sufferance of 
Japan. (The same applies, in a way, to Siberia.) 

One does not need to be endowed with the wisdom of the Elder 
Statesmen to see that, if the intention is to possess both the eastern 
and the western shores of the Pacific, then even supposing England 
stood aloof while the conquest was being made, she would have to 
intervene immediately afterwards. If the Japanese took California, 
Oregon and Washington, they would have to go on to British 
Columbia. If they did this much, Australia and New Zealand 

24 



would be but a morsel for breakfast some fine morning. If they 
took the Philippines, with Guam and Hawaii on the way to San 
Francisco, they would naturally take Hong Kong and Singapore 
also. England would grow distracted about India. A bid by 
Japan for absolute supremacy in the Pacific, therefore, would 
bring not merely 88 per cent, but if need be 98 per cent of Eng- 
land's guns to pointing at Japan. The seizure of Hawaii by Japan 
would bring all these guns into instant action, unless, indeed, it 
were thought judicious to let Japanese and American navies engage 
for a period of wholesome mutual destruction before turning loose; 
in which case England would take Hawaii for herself at the end 

of the game. 

* * * 

In the second matter, that of commerce in China, Japan's posi- 
tion is complicated. She needs continental resources to support 
her insular power, and the continent most easily available to her is 
Asia. To be sure of getting them, at need, she much be safe in 
the seas between, and from Sakhalien to Formosa she is guarding 
the narrow sea gates, or preparing to guard them. She feels that 
she could do this with one ship defending for two attacking, which 
is about the present proportion between the Japanese and American 
navies. But the calculation leaves out of account the English navy, 
and we may be quite sure Japan has not forgotten it. 

This is the position in Northern China. But in Southern China, 
along the valley of the Yang-tze, England has claimed, and what 
is more, has exercised a right of priority for her trade.* ... It is the 
best part of China. Han Kow is a seaport as far inland as 
Montreal, and English gunboats have penetrated inland so many 
hundreds of miles farther that their officers could, see the mountains 
of Tibet. Assured possession here England would regard not only 
as a choice commercial opportunity, but as one more far flung 
bulwark for the security of her empire in India. 

Between Japan, with the special sphere she wants in the North, 
and England, with the sphere England wants in the South, comes 
the United States. But America does not ask for a special inter- 



*Hayashi, Secret Memoirs, p. 186: "The British Foreign Minister, as the 
result of agitation by some members of the Cabinet, wished to extend the 
scope of the alliance (1902) so as to include the protection of the British 
interests in India in case of necessity. The arguments advanced by Lord 
Lanclsdowne were, briefly, that Japan under the treaty obtained protection 
for her enormous interests in Korea, but Great Britain only obtained pro- 
tection for her interests in the Yang-Tze valley p. 189. 'I could only 

repeat that British interests along the Yang-Tze were in no way behind 
those of Japan in Korea." 

25 



mediate sphere. She insists upon the open door in all China, 
equal trading opportunity for all who come to trade with that 
ancient, and now awakening, empire of four hundred millions. In 
this matter of commerce, therefore, neither of the others is her 
friend, as yet. And in respect of the power by regard for which 
the issue will be decided, this is the position. England and Japan 
have divided the western Pacific between them with (bar some 
exceptions favorable to England) the equator as a serviceable 
boundary; and into these juxtaposed fields the United States pro- 
jects a great naval wedge, of which the point is at Manila and 
the base rests upon naval stations at Samoa, Hawaii and the 
Aleutian islands. 

Plainly, if England and Japan decide for a partition of China, 
as to its commerce, into mutually satisfactory spheres of interest, 
there follows a renewal of the alliance with this definite purpose 
as the underlying object — and the elimination of the American 
wedge in convenient season. This means the other two against the 

United States. 

# * # 

But that there is an objection to this solution, on the part of 
Japan, is clear from her whole history. Granted that she will 
want a special sphere if there are to be other special spheres, 
there is greater safety for her, and as much opportunity, in there 
being no special spheres at all. Everything proves that her one 
permanent policy is the elimination of European spheres, posses- 
sions, footholds, from Asia on the Pacific altogether. She has put 
Russia out. She has put Germany out. England and France re- 
main to be put out, if ever the patiently awaited opportunity ar- 
rives. Secure and long continued operation of the American open 
door policy would achieve, by indirection, the essence of this per- 
manent policy of Japan's, and would lead, in time, to its perfect 
fulfilment. 

It is not Japan, therefore, that is to be reckoned with as likely 
to interpose a barrier to the success of the American policy, but 
rather England, with her desire for the Yang-tze valley. Japan's 
real wish would be to side with America in the matter, and if it 
turns out that she must be counted against this the reason will be 
that she has made a cold calculation of England's ability to enforce 
her requirements. If in that case the United States fought Japan 
to enforce the open door policy, it would be with the sure prospect 
of having to fight England also — both together or one after the 
other. 

If, in such conditions, Japan elected to go with the United 

26 



States for the Open Door, a preliminary requirement for Japan 
would be an alliance with Russia. At the moment, Russia is hardly, 
perhaps, in position to make such an alliance, although the Soviet 
government's recent diplomatic success over England in Persia cer- 
tainly gives food for reflection. Again, if Japan were to come down 
on the American side, there would follow, inevitably, a diplomatic 
competition between America and England for the favor of China. 
Russia could not venture on an alliance with Japan without 
knowing where Germany stood. And if Japan did join with 
Russia it would mean a western added to an eastern threat against 
India, and England would at once attack Japan on the sea. No 
better opportunity would ever be likely to offer to drive from the 
sea, or into her own register, the splendidly efficient merchant ma- 
rine the Japanese have built and operated since the chance to do so 
came to them with England's departure from the Pacific in 1905 
with the deliberate intention of putting an end to German com- 
petition in commerce, merchant marine and naval armament. 

# * # 

Surely, indeed, the Elder Statesmen must walk warily. Surely, 
we may depend, they know it well. The day the German fleet 
surrendered was not a day from which they could date an era of 
serene and uneventful comfort. 



27 



III. The Atlantic 

America's difficulty is, in many ways, not unlike that of Japan. 
As we have seen, the Pacific is a three power affair, and China is 
(apart from China) a three power affair. In neither case is the 
preponderance of power with the United States. But there is more. 
The western hemisphere is a two power affair, and not, as we had 
been rather disposed to assume without examination, a region 
dominated! by the United States. The British Empire is a 
continental power in Canada, a naval power in the north Atlantic, 
a naval power on the Canadian Pacific coast, a naval power in the 
Caribbean and in front of the canal, an almost unrivalled mer- 
chant power in the Atlantic waters of South America — but be- 
ginning to sense United States competition, able to place effective, 
ultra-modern naval power on that ocean, and in as good a position 
as the United States on the South American Pacific coast. Late re- 
ports indicate that she is about to fortify certain South Sea islands. 

* * * 

This is a two power continent (again barring South America, 
which is a congeries of states, whose interests, determined by sea 
routes and exchange facilities, work rather towards Europe than 
towards North America), and while one of the two has always 
had, and still claims, mercantile and naval maritime supremacy, 
the other is now, for the first time, certainly the first time in 
sixty years, moving into both fields — with an eye on first place. 
Doubtless when Mr. Wilson spoke in St. Louis in 1916 of America's 
need for an "incomparable navy" he envisaged the situation that 
is now being faced by his successor. Needing it, as Mr. Wilson 
saw, and as we see from this analysis of the present position, in 
China, in the Pacific and on the North, Central and South Atlantic, 
is one thing. Having it, as Mr. Harding and Mr. Hughes see, is 
quite another thing. Getting it, in the light of Germany's much 
less ambitious effort, is something that brings us, as the need has 
already brought us, far into the danger zone. Once there, every 
move is under study by the best trained and most competent ob- 
servers the world has ever seen, stationed on their quiet lookout in 
a "murky London street," in the offices of the British Admiralty.* 

*J. A. Cramb (English), Germany and England, p. 46: England is a na- 
tion schooled in empire from the past, the power which once belonged to the 
few gradually passing more and more into the ranks of the English race 
itself, so that you have for the first time in history at once a nation and a' 
democracy that is imperial . . . pp. 68-70. Now for what have these wars 
been fought? Can one detect underneath them any governing idea, controll- 
ing them from first to last? I answer at once: There is such an idea, and 
that idea is the idea of empire. All England's wars for the past five hun- 
dred years have been fought for empire. . . . What was the stake for which 
England fought in her battles against Bonaparte? TRe stake was world- 
empire, and Napoleon knew it well. . . . Here, then, we have this transcen- 
dental force governing the wars of England. 

28 



What, no doubt, it is meant to propose, on the part of the United 
States, at this conference, is a scaling down of naval expenditures, 
upon a basis as nearly as possible approaching equality in the 
ultimate strength of the participants, so as to provide for a sea 
police, or something like that; operating quite outside the field of 
diplomatic contentions ; and then a settlement of outstanding issues, 
such as the China trade business, on such a plan as would be pos- 
sible if there were such a force, and not, as happens to be the case, 
where there is a "supreme" navy, and a hard pressed second in- 
sular power, and a two power hemisphere with one of the powers 
in the danger zone. 

Perhaps it will be safe to conclude that instead of the leading 
conferees stating the issues with the absolute frankness indicated 
in the quite impossible "nothing but the truth" method adopted for 
them in an opening chapter, they will, on the contrary, keep just 
as far away from such language as they possibly can. But that 
will not alter the substantial accuracy of the statement of what is 
really being considered at Washington. They talked nothing but 
the avoidance of war at the Peace Conference at the Hague in 

1899, but it was from the Hague, nevertheless, that Sir John Fisher 
took home to England the idea of war with Germany. There will 
be men at Washington, too, who will make no speeches, but who, if 
they find the United States intractable, unwilling to adopt their root 
ideas as to what the sea is and where its supremacy should rest, 
will never rest until America has been involved in a war by which 
her power has been reduced and her prestige destroyed, if all that 
can be managed and contrived. Fortunately, there are guide posts 
to safety, even in The Danger Zone. 

Chicago, October 1, 1921. 



29 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




KENFIELD-LEACH CO., CHICAGO 



